ASSALAMU ALAIKUM: January, 2009

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Gaza crisis appeal raises £3m

An emergency relief appeal for the crisis in Gaza raised £3 million in its first week - despite anger over broadcasters' refusal to show it. Skip related content Protests gathered pace against Sky and the BBC's ban on screening the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) broadcast earlier this week. But DEC said that, thanks to funding since the appeal was launched, aid reached almost 800,000 people with vital supplies of blankets, food, water, sanitation and medical equipment in the conflict-stricken region. Brendan Gormley, chief executive of the committee, said: "We are delighted that the public have responded in this way to the appeal. The money raised is enabling aid agencies on the ground to reach people in dire need of humanitarian assistance."

The BBC and Sky refused to show the emergency appeal, arguing that to do so would compromise their impartiality. BBC director general Mark Thompson said the decision not to broadcast the appeal was "absolutely" in line with the corporation's broader approach to impartiality and appeals. However, DEC warned the situation remained critical, claiming a million people were without access to a safe and adequate water supply.

Mr Gormley added: "More funds are needed so that DEC members can continue to meet people's immediate needs. If you have not donated already, please give what you can so that we can continue our aid efforts. Every penny raised will go straight to helping the most vulnerable people in Gaza." A special committee set up by the BBC Trust is examining its decision to refuse the broadcast, after more than 15,000 people complained and protesters gathered outside several of its studios.

More than 100 MPs from all parties signed an early day motion criticising the BBC and Sky News for refusing to show the appeal. Terrestrial broadcasters ITV, Channel 4 and Five showed the televised appeal on Monday.

SOURCE: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090130/tuk-gaza-crisis-appeal-raises-3m-6323e80.html

January 30 5:59 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Winning and Losing in Gaza

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090209/falk

The Nation - January 22, 2009

Despite a horrific price in lives and suffering, the Palestinians may be slowly winning the 'second war', the legitimacy war, whose battlefield has become global. Also, Hamas may have won a major battle for Palestinian hearts and minds, notes Richard Falk.

Now that there is a cease-fire in Gaza, questions are emerging about what Israel has achieved. Of course, the lopsided casualty figures and Israel's military dominance certainly make it the battlefield winner. But such a "mission accomplished" assessment is as misleading in occupied Palestine as it was in Iraq. Although Hamas could not come close to matching Israel's armed might, it may have won a major battle for Palestinian hearts and minds. Reports from the West Bank, Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora suggest widespread anger at the Palestinian Authority for its passivity and a rise in support for Hamas, even among secular Palestinians, in appreciation of its determined resistance to the brutality of the Israeli occupation and military operations. If Hamas becomes the dominant political force in all of occupied Palestine when the next elections are held, Israel will be the loser.

The scorecard is also complicated on the diplomatic front. Perhaps Israel's military display will have some inhibiting effects on its opponents, but the extreme one-sidedness of the struggle evoked widespread protests and some negative diplomatic repercussions. Qatar and Mauritania, among the few states in the region that had accepted Israel, broke relations, and the European Union has suspended moves to improve Israel's status as a trading partner. The Turkish prime minister even suggested expelling Israel from the United Nations.

In this inflamed atmosphere, it is no wonder that respected international voices, ranging from the UN's high commissioner for human rights to the president of the General Assembly, are for the first time calling for a war crimes investigation. The Malaysian Parliament has unanimously called on the UN to establish a special war crimes tribunal. Even before Israel's December 27 attack, its prolonged blockade of Gaza had brought about a grave humanitarian crisis. The blockade is a form of collective punishment, and as such it is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. On top of that, Israel's military assault inflicted massive loss of civilian life and severe damage to civilian infrastructure, including many public buildings not connected to Hamas's military. Even if Israel's claims of defensive response are accepted at face value, this is excessive use of force. There are also widespread reports that Israel has used legally dubious weapons like white phosphorus, dense inert metal explosives and depleted uranium. And finally, through its rigid control of exits, Israel has denied the people even the right to flee the fighting, a violation of humanitarian law that lends credibility to the claim that Israeli occupation policy essentially imprisons Gazans.

Winning militarily but losing politically should not surprise students of modern warfare. After all, the United States won every battle in Vietnam and yet eventually lost the war. The same was true for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and indeed it was the general pattern in decolonization struggles. In such wars the militarily dominant side not only loses the war but generates a deep crisis at home and experiences a tarnished international reputation. What these counterinsurgency or neocolonial wars have in common is that "the enemy" is merged with civilian society; the fighting abandons the restraints of international humanitarian law; and by killing helpless civilians, the occupying or colonial power is perceived as committing war crimes. This has been the case in Gaza, with worldwide outrage inflicting on Israel a major defeat in the battle for public legitimacy, which in the end is often decisive in shaping the outcome of major conflicts.

Neither the United States nor Israel has discovered the limits of military power in the contemporary world. The leaders of both countries seem unable to learn the lesson of recent history: that occupation in the postcolonial world rarely produces the desired results at an acceptable cost. It is from this perspective, despite a horrific price in lives and suffering, that the Palestinians may be slowly winning the "second war," the legitimacy war, whose battlefield has become global. Perhaps the most impressive victory in a legitimacy war was won by South Africa's antiapartheid movement. If the Gaza conflict brings the Palestinian struggle for self-determination to the top of the global justice agenda, it will be a major victory for Hamas. Of course, Hamas is not the African National Congress, and Israel is not South Africa. The Palestinians lack the sort of inspired leadership that Nelson Mandela and other ANC figures provided.

Military campaigns usually have a clear beginning and end, as well as a visible battlefield. In contrast, legitimacy wars have no clear boundaries and involve subtle shifts of public opinion that can alter the overall political climate in decisive ways. I believe the Gaza conflict, especially against the background of Israel's prior siege and its 2006 Lebanon misadventure, is approaching that tipping point. Despite the frightful punishment inflicted on Gaza's people, despite the bitterly divided Palestinian leadership, despite the cruelties of more than four decades of occupation, the Palestinians are poised to achieve victory.

The fragile cease-fire poses new challenges and opportunities. There are hopeful scenarios, but they depend on leaps of imagination that have been lacking on both sides. Hamas could confirm its willingness to behave as a political actor and stop firing rockets at civilians. Israel could recover in the legitimacy war by dealing directly with Hamas and taking its offer of a long-term cease-fire seriously. Israel could also show a willingness to engage in peace talks based on the 2002 Arab League Peace Initiative. Even at this late stage of the conflict, such alternatives offer both Israelis and Palestinians a promising, if perilous, escape route from the inferno.

About Richard Falk

Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, is the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories and a member of the Nation editorial board. He is the author of many books, including The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order After Iraq.

(This article appears in the February 9, 2009 edition of The Nation.)

Mr Nadeem Juneaja (Media Spokesperson)

The Social Welfare Party (www.socialwelfareparty.com , email: info@socialwelfareparty.com)

- A Political Party Working To Build Global Partnerships, Lobbying, Campaigning & Promoting Justice
- A Political Party Working To Create A Modern Social Welfare State for its Citizens

January 30 12:47 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Viva Palestina - A Lifeline from Britain to Gaza

I have finally found a some time to write this e-mail. I attended the Respect party event on Monday at Saffron Restaurant in Manchester where George Galloway, as well as some other excellent speakers gave their speeches. The main message was to drum up support for the aid Convoy which will be leaving London on 14^th February aptly named “A valentine for Palestine’.

Watch YouTube video of George speaking in Manchester on Monday evening at http://www.vivapalestina.org/video.htm and also the heartfelt and touching speech by brother Majdy Akeel from Interpal

During my discussions with friends/relatives about the crisis in Gaza, many have conveyed the feeling of helplessness. Well there’s no need to feel apathetic anymore as you can help by giving as much of your excess goods as possible for this convoy (inc clothing, computers, household items etc). Forget E-bay and forget Boot Sales add to this convoy and make a difference to the people who really need your help NOW.

The Convoy will grow and grow as it passes thru France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt – and by the time it reaches Gaza there will be 100s of vehicles with aid and supplies, Insha Allah. I appreciate that many of us cannot dedicate as much time as we would like to attend marches, talks etc, however, the least we can do is help with this fantastic initiative.

Here are a few words from the man himself… (Website: www.vivapalestina.org)

“Everyone who supports the Palestinians people in Gaza should step up their aid, activities and political solidarity. The convoy I am helping to organise to Gaza, leaving London on 14 February, St Valentine’s Day, takes on even more importance. Support it. Collect for it. Send a vehicle laden with aid on it. The convoy is designed to break both the material and the media blockade on Gaza. “Let’s answer the BBC’s disgraceful action – taken at public expense, thanks to our licence fees – with a massive convoy of material aid and political support for the Palestinians. We will be adding images from the convoy's progress as we get them".

Phone Ghada on 07958 450 867 or Email Ghada at ghada@vivapalestina.org

NOTE: The collection point for items for this convoy in Manchester is Saffron Restaurant –(107 Cheetham Hill Rd). I have asked about collection points in other major cities but not heard back as yet. Please call Ghada on the above number for further information.

Message from info@thinkersforum.org (BOLTON) – check www.bolton.vivapalestina.org

Finally, here’s an excerpt from an e-mail that I received from Ahmed "Statement by Jewish Anti-Zionist Network on Holocaust Remembrance Day" below shows that our continued support for our brothers and sisters in Gaza MUST continue and we mustn't become apathetic because the bombs have stopped dropping. Please visit http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/ to read the full article.

"Although the guns are relatively silent, this genocidal assault on the Palestinian people isn’t over. The siege, the lack of food and fresh water, the disease-threatening broken sewage system, and economic collapse and humanitarian crisis persist in Gaza with the full support of the U.S. , Europe and the Egyptian government. As the siege of Gaza continues, so does the slow ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the home demolitions, the building of the apartheid wall, the settlement build-up, the economic devastation of the towns and villages strangled by checkpoints, the assault on Palestinian neighbourhoods in Jaffa, Akka, Lydda, the Galilee and the Negev, the mass imprisonment of Palestinians (over 11,000), and all the large and small ways by which Israel is seeking to crush the spirit and erase the presence of the Palestinian people in their homeland.”

Mona Baker, Personal website: www.monabaker.com

Resisting Genocide - Holocaust Remembrance Day

http://pulsemedia.org/2009/01/27/resisting-genocide/

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

Resisting Genocide

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network released the following statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day:

How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow!…
She weeps sore into the night, and her tears are on her cheeks:
among all who loved her she has none to comfort her.
(Book of Lamentations)

Last week, after murdering 1400 people – of whom 400 were children – after bombing hospitals and mosques, schools, universities and humanitarian supplies, and tens of thousand of homes, Israel declared a cease-fire. A shameful parade of European leaders immediately went to Jerusalem to embrace the mass murderers and to pledge their support for the continuing siege of Gaza .

The primary purpose of this massacre was to break the spirit of the Palestinian people until they surrender and accept their fate as lesser human beings. As former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said in 2002, “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” European leaders support this goal, as did previous U.S. administrations, as do the ruling elites of Egypt , Jordan and Saudi-Arabia, despite the fury of their peoples. We wait to see if the freshly inaugurated Obama Administration will break with sixty long years of attack on the Palestinian people armed and financed by the U.S. and Europe .

We grieve with the people of Gaza . We see the faces of the children, of the women and the men; we hear their voices. We also hear the silence of the leaders of Western countries, intermittently broken by evasive platitudes. And we are reminded of the time when the world turned a blind eye while our forebears, our families, were slaughtered.

100,000 Palestinians were made homeless in Gaza this month. Most of them became refugees in 1948 when they were expelled at gunpoint from their towns and villages. Now they are homeless again, even in their land of exile, and at risk of being driven out from Palestine altogether.

Yet on January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the leaders of the U.S. and Europe will be joined in honoring the memory of our dead. Even as we seek to remember and to honor the immensity of that loss, we struggle to find words to convey the hypocrisy of these ceremonies, in which those who are silent today pay homage to the victims of yesterday’s silence.

The radical Jewish writer Walter Benjamin, who died while fleeing the Nazis, wrote, “not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.” The Third Reich was defeated, and yet, “the enemy has not ceased to be victorious.” Racism, mass murder, and genocide continue to be accepted tools of statecraft. Even our dead are not safe. They have been called up, disturbed, dredged from their mass graves and forced to testify against their fellow human beings in pain, to confess a hatred that was alien to them and to offer themselves up as justification for a new cycle of suffering in Palestine . Their ghosts have been enlisted to help displace fellow Jews from Arab homelands, and to bequeath to them that same alien hatred, conscripting those of us descending from Arab lands to become enemies of our own memory and past.

The Jewish British MP Gerald Kaufman spoke in anguish while the massacres in Gaza were taking place: “My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza .” We share and echo that refusal. Let not the memory of Jews murdered by the Nazi regime serve as cover for the attempted destruction of the Palestinian people!

Although the guns are relatively silent, this genocidal assault on the Palestinian people isn’t over. The siege, the lack of food and fresh water, the disease-threatening broken sewage system, and economic collapse and humanitarian crisis persist in Gaza with the full support of the U.S. , Europe and the Egyptian government. As the siege of Gaza continues, so does the slow ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the home demolitions, the building of the apartheid wall, the settlement build-up, the economic devastation of the towns and villages strangled by checkpoints, the assault on Palestinian neighborhoods in Jaffa, Akka, Lydda, the Galilee and the Negev, the mass imprisonment of Palestinians (over 11,000), and all the large and small ways by which Israel is seeking to crush the spirit and erase the presence of the Palestinian people in their homeland.

Faced with the threat of annihilation in Europe , Jews resisted. From ghettos to concentration camps and within countries under occupation, Jews led resistance to the Nazi regime. Today, from the ghetto of Gaza to the Bantustans of the West Bank and from the neighborhoods of Jaffa and Akka to cities across the globe, Palestinians resist Israel ’s attempt to destroy them as a people. On January 27th, honoring the memory of our dead is for us inseparable from honoring more than sixty years of Palestinian survival and resistance. Only when the Palestinian people regain their freedom will the dead rest safely. Then we will all celebrate another victory for life.

Mona Baker, Personal website: www.monabaker.com

January 29 12:32 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Letter to the BBC - LOWKEY

Letter To The BBC (http://blogs.myspace.com/lowkeyuk)

I think I understand why you can never relate,
It seems even you live in fear of this terrorist state,
You say you must remain “impartial”,
But I’m sure you know that your refusal IS harmful,
Why is it partial to air an appeal?
If your son’s school was blown up I wonder how you as a parent would feel,
You say your impartial but your actions imply the opposite,
Therefore it is obvious that you support the IDF and what it did,
I guess Palestinian’s are just people you do not want to live,
Where is your conscience? Stop following the orders those monsters give,
You don’t want the truth to be seen by the eyes of the public,
Your silence is compliance, you Zionist puppet,
You suppress the truth but when there is an outburst you panic,
The IDF caused 1.4 billion pounds worth of damage,
Either you support death or you support life,
You support death if you support these organised war crimes,
The taxpayer’s will be heard you can’t stop them,
Does Israel own the strings attached to Mark Thompson?
Your silence means kids die,
To me it is clear that you have already picked sides,
You may as well have aimed the guns at these infants,
Never forget, it is we the people who fund your existence,
Now I understand why your DJ’s won’t play my songs about Palestine,
But if I have to, my career is something I will sacrifice,
Palestine's existence is worth more than my success,
Because to them it is a matter of life or death,
You are not outraged by the killing of innocent civilians in another land,
Yet you are outraged by the antics of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand,
I will scream Palestine till the world gets sick of me,
But it is your platform, your voice which has now lost all credibility,
If it was up to Rupert Murdoch,
Palestine would be a word the world had never heard of,
That’s why Fox News and Sky News got turned off,
If you refuse to air this appeal you too will be turned off

January 27 11:04 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Lyrics to "Long Live Palestine" by LOWKEY

Long Live Palestine (by Lowkey)

www.myspace.com/lowkeyuk

This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza,
This is for the child that is searching for an answer,
I wish I could take your tears and replace them with laughter,
Long live Palestine, Long live Gaza!!

While we listen to tunes, made by ignorant fools,
Israel blocked the UN from delivering food,
They'll bring in the troops and you won't even glimpse at the news,
They make money of the products that we are quick to consume,
It's not simply a question of differing views,
Forget emotions, this is fact, what I spit is the truth,
Makes no difference if you're a Christian or if you're a Jew,
They are just people living in different conditions to you,
They still die when you bomb their schools, mosques and hospitals,
It is not because of rockets, please god can you stop it all,
I'm not related to the strangers on the TV,
But I relate because those faces could have been me,
Words can never ever explain the raw tragedy,
It's not a war they're just murdering more rapidly,
We are automatically supporting pure savagery,
Imagine how you'd feel if it was your family,

This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza,
This is for the child that is searching for an answer,
I wish I could take your tears and replace them with laughter,
Long live Palestine, Long live Gaza,

Palestine remains in my heart forever,
We stand for peace, in times of war we shan't surrender,
Remember, it didn't start in that dark December,
Every coin is a bullet, if you're Mark's and Spencer,
And when your sipping Coca-Cola,
That's another pistol in the holster of a soulless soldier,
You say you know about the Zionist lobby,
But you put money in their pocket when you're buying their coffee,
Talking about revolution, sitting in Starbucks,
The fact is that's the type of thinking I can't trust,
Let alone even start to respect,
Before you talk learn the meaning of that scarf on your neck,
Forget Nestle,
Obama promised Israel 30 billion over the next decade,
They're trigger happy and they're crazy,
Think about that when you're putting Huggies nappies on your baby,

This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza,
This is for the child that is searching for an answer,
I wish I could take your tears and replace them with laughter,
Long live Palestine, Long live Gaza,

This is not just a war over stolen land,
Why do you think little boys are throwing stones at tanks?
We will never really know how many people are dead,
They drop bombs on little girls while they sleep in their beds,
Don't get offended by facts, just try and listen,
Nothing is more anti-Semitic than Zionism,
So please don't bring bad vibes when you speak to me,
I know there's plenty of Rabbi's that agree with me,
It's your choice what you do with this message,
Don't get it confused; I view this from a truly human perspective,
How many more resolutions have to be violated,
How many more children have to be annihilated
Israel is a terror state, there terrorists that terrorise,
I testify, my television televised them telling lies,
This is not a war, it is systematic genocide,
But whatever they try, Palestine will never die!!!

Correspondence received on Gaza Crisis W/E 25.1.09

Here's my regular weekly update on Gaza with excellent contributions from many people. Note that instead of sending too many documents via e-mail I have started using Google Docs. You don't need to have a googlemail a/c or create one - simply select 'View published presentation in a new window' to view the presentation or document.

Khalid Khan

http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com

From Khalid Khan (Manchester)

Farakh send some gruesome pictures that showed vividly how closely the current oppression of our brothers and sisters in Palestine resembles the Nazi oppression of the Jewish people. When I saw this it reminded me of a website I created many years ago in HTML the hard way, before all the new snazzy web development tools came into being.. oops beginning to show my age ! Surprisingly you can still view this and it hasn't been taken down - However, I now BLOG at

http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/ with regular updates on Gaza situation.

Here's the link -

http://zip.to/khalid check the following ... 'Nazi or Zionist - No Difference', 'Poem - Song of Jenin', 'Poem - Let's get back to Islam'.

As you will see the Song of Jenin Poem could equally well apply to the current conflict in Gaza.

A short video summarizing the 8 years of President (for lack of better term) George W.Bush

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/b8856207c0/2-term-summary-from-avizzv92

Obama swears in ….. Faithfully.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/3c24ff68d6/obama-swears-infaithfully-from-fod-team

From Sajid Khan (London)

Thank you for sharing these pictures with me......I am physically shaken at the plight of our fellow brothers and sisters.......MAY ALMIGHTY ACCEPT OUR DUAS AND BRING JUSTICE AND PEACE TO ALL THE MUSLIM UMMAH !! AMEEN

From Jamil Mohammad (Sheffield)

Excellent poem by Mirza Yawar Baig called 'To the Israeli Soldier' - archived at http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/

From Mustafa Desai

Letter by Anne Candlin on "Children of Gaza - archived at http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on

– Sir Winston Churchill

From Saadat Khan (Preston)

Kaufman: Israeli "Nazis" Sky News Blogs http://blogs.news.sky.com/boultonandco/Post:2fd48360-17cf-4560-a6b5-80c379e2bd7e

Salaams. An excellent factual email well worthy of sharing and taking 5 mins to read… Israel's Lies- Henry Siegman - archived at http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/

MP Gerald Kaufman has created a stir likening the Israeli attacks on Gaza with the actions of the Nazis in World War Two. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7833726.stm

From Sakib Shaikh (Manchester)

Zionism: in their own words/Great reference. View presentation Israeli History X at http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dcj7h539_56v6jrvddb

From Farakh Rafique (Leeds)

I missed this news but a Christian friend sent me this link about a Palestinian sister who lost 15 members of her family in Gaza air strike (11 children among the dead). She lives in his home town Kenilworth, Warwick and she has a restaurant in Coventry.

http://onemillioncandles.blogspot.com/

Here is GG's recent speech in HoC, worth a 1000 good voices. Thanks Allah we do have some fearless people amongst us, who are not running scared and are speaking up for justice & humanity.

http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=goerge+galloway&hl=en&emb=0&aq=-1&oq=#

Here he is giving one rookie a lesson in history on his radio chat show....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUFLpP9Prxo

Regarding the appalling decision by the BBC (and SKY) not to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for Gaza, please spend a few mins to send a complaint online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ . I heard on the radio recently that they have received over 11,000 complaints already !

Feel free to use the excellent letter below as a template that Farakh sent last week. I found that one of the people at the BBC that made this outrageous decision is called Caroline Thomson (Chief Operating officer).

To: BBC Director-General,

Mark Thompson.

Dear Mr. Thompson,

Your refusal to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for Gaza has incensed me, my family and many people in my community. This is yet another nail in the coffin (literally!) for the grief stricken people of Gaza. In addition, it is another example of BBC's blatant bias towards the Zionists which has been much evident on our screens lately.

You have recently stated, "the appeal might jeopardise the public's confidence in the BBC's impartiality"; what tripe! What an insult to the ordinary people who care for humanity and who want to alleviate human suffering. The BBC has lost its plot, and the public has truly lost the confidence in you caving into the Zionist Isreali lobby groups.

Gaza is dying! We must do all we can for those in dire need. You and the BBC too can play its part and get some respect back from the public which you have undoubtedly lost over the past few weeks. BE A MAN, STAND UP AND BE COUNTED!

Farrak (Leeds)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

Finally, on this same topic, I received the intesting take on the BBC's stance from a colleague below:-

One - they do have to be seen to be impartial - you will probably find that Sky News may follow suit…

Two - the negative publicity is being reported upon by the BBC themselves, thereby highlighting even more the plight of the Gaza people.

A bad analogy I know, but the BBC used to ban records in the 60's and 70's, only to find that the adverse publicity backfired and they went straight to Number 1….

So, provided the campaign against the BBC ban is kept up - and the Beeb report upon that - you ought to get a better response to the GAZA appeal that would be the case had they actually screened the appeal..

Bear in mind that they should still continue the anti-BBC campaign in order to the generate the adverse publicity

Just to emphasise the point of negative publicity - do you really think that Salman Rushdie and his 'Satanic rites' would have made him so much money without the campaign waged against him and his book by the moslem people…

Cheers, Ewen

From Mazhar Iqbal (Leeds)

Anyway, here's another one. Would be funny if its wasn't so tragic. "If the Hamas rockets are so lethal, why doesn't Israel swap an F-16 for some?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-now-weve-all-seen-through-the-israeli-governments-excuses-1452234.html

Synthetic Alcohol is Not Najis - Related to remarks that the drink Rubicon is haram as it contains Alcohol. Please note that this is based Shafii ruling. Here is the Hanafi ruling, in summary, it's Halal.

http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=1448

"Al Jazeera [http://english.aljazeera.net/] are doing a fantastic job in covering the conflict in Gaza and whilst the images and videos are graphic and harrowing they are showing the reality of war and are keeping this conflict in the public eye where as other news agencies for whatever reason seem to be playing down the conflict. Al Jazeera have taken an innovative and unprecedented step in allowing their footage to be used under the Creative Commons [http://creativecommons.org/] Licensing for people to blog, put on websites and distribute in whatever way they choose (non-profit). The repository can be accessed here: http://cc.aljazeera.net/

We must use all legal means at our disposal to highlight the genocidal actions of Israel and keep this in the public eye. The news agencies can hide it as much as they want but new media is now becoming much more powerful than established media. Do you part for Palestine, no good getting angry and frustrated, channel that anger and frustration in creative (as opposed to destructive) pursuits."

From:

Khan, Khalid Sent: 20 January 2009 22:41Subject: Sky 515 - Press TV debate shows....

Walekum Salam, Good words thank you.. Although I watched this channel regularly before the conflict, I'm mostly watching 515 - Press TV as they also show what is really happening on the ground in great detail and show some excellent debates etc. The one's I try to watch are listed below. As you can see they have a permanent slot for Yvonne who used to host this excellent debate program on the Islam Channel, but was forced to leave because of some comments that that were aired, I believe.

Thursday 8.00pm Agenda Yvonne Ridley (http://www.yvonneridley.org/)

Friday 7.40pm Islam&Life Tarik Ramadan (http://www.tariqramadan.com/)

Sunday 8.00pm The Real deal George Galloway (http://www.georgegalloway.com/)

For those people that don't have SKY, there's no excuse since you can catch up with past debates of the above 3 at

http://www.presstv.com/Programs/archive/#

Here are some links with regards Gerald Kaufman (Jewish MP) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7834487.stm

"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town.... A German soldier shot her dead in her bed, he said. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza," the MP said".

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055922.html

Some thoughts on the MP's comments by Mas'ud Khan (www.masud.co.uk) http://masudblog.com/?p=564

January 27 1:15 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Israel's Lies- Henry Siegman

Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.
I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.

Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’

The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.

Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.
The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:

What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?
Israel’s government would like the world to believe that Hamas launched its Qassam rockets because that is what terrorists do and Hamas is a generic terrorist group. In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland. In the late 1930s and 1940s, parties within the Zionist movement resorted to terrorist activities for strategic reasons. According to Benny Morris, it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. He writes in Righteous Victims that an upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict’. He also documents atrocities committed during the 1948-49 war by the IDF, admitting in a 2004 interview, published in Ha’aretz, that material released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence showed that ‘there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought . . . In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them, and destroy the villages themselves.’ In a number of Palestinian villages and towns the IDF carried out organised executions of civilians. Asked by Ha’aretz whether he condemned the ethnic cleansing, Morris replied that he did not:
A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.
In other words, when Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.

It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.
These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’ It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.

In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.
Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.[*] They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.

Middle East observers wonder whether Israel’s assault on Hamas will succeed in destroying the organisation or expelling it from Gaza. This is an irrelevant question. If Israel plans to keep control over any future Palestinian entity, it will never find a Palestinian partner, and even if it succeeds in dismantling Hamas, the movement will in time be replaced by a far more radical Palestinian opposition.
If Barack Obama picks a seasoned Middle East envoy who clings to the idea that outsiders should not present their own proposals for a just and sustainable peace agreement, much less press the parties to accept it, but instead leave them to work out their differences, he will assure a future Palestinian resistance far more extreme than Hamas – one likely to be allied with al-Qaida. For the US, Europe and most of the rest of the world, this would be the worst possible outcome. Perhaps some Israelis, including the settler leadership, believe it would serve their purposes, since it would provide the government with a compelling pretext to hold on to all of Palestine. But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Anthony Cordesman, one of the most reliable military analysts of the Middle East, and a friend of Israel, argued in a 9 January report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the tactical advantages of continuing the operation in Gaza were outweighed by the strategic cost – and were probably no greater than any gains Israel may have made early in the war in selective strikes on key Hamas facilities. ‘Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal, or at least one it can credibly achieve?’ he asks. ‘Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.’ Cordesman concludes that ‘any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends.’

15 January
Note [*] See my piece in the LRB, 16 August 2007.

Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in New York, is a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.

January 23 2:25 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Children of Gaza

As an outsider to Blackburn, please excuse me entering into your group debate. It is important for people to know the truth: Israel has justified it's massacre of civilians and illegal destruction of civilian infrastructure on the grounds of defending it's citizens against Hamas rocket fire which broke the ceasefire. The Israeli government knows that this is a blatant lie, just as the justification for the invasion of Iraq by western governments was based on the lie that Saddam had nuclear weapons, which he didn't have - a lie for which 1,000,000 Iraqis lost their lives and 4,000,000 Iraqis have become refugees.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, an Israeli site used by the Israeli government, has published statistics of rocket and mortar fire from January to November 2008. (Please see attachment with graph taken from their site).During the ceasefire - from June19th to mid Nov. - there was a reduction in fire from1,199 rockets in the first six months to twenty rockets in the last six months of 2008. None of these twenty rockets were fired by Hamas, who were doing everything they could to restrain the militant groups firing these rockets. Israel in the same period of time had killed between 29-30 Gazans. On Nov 5th they again broke the ceasefire by assassinating another six Gazans when the world's eyes were on the USA Election results.

Another USA study on ceasefires has shown that in almost every case of ceasefires being broken, it is Israel who first breaks the ceasefire.*

Israel also totally failed to comply with the conditions of the ceasefire which required them to keep open the border crossings. In late November 2008, before the beginning of the current massacre, I visited the Erez Crossing at Gaza, to support members of 14 international aid agencies who had come to deliver aid and had been forbidden entry to Gaza. One of our party was a surgeon working for a church-based organisation. She specialised in facial reconstructive surgery and had booked appointments for her people within Gaza but was forbidden access to her patients by the Israel govt.. In the three hours that we stood at the crossing, which is the main commercial crossing into Gaza, not one truck or lorry came in or out of the crossing. It was ghostly in it's silence and ghostly in the absence of any humans or human traffic. The normal number of delivery vehicles should be between 500-700 daily to sustain the needs of the 1.5 million population trapped behind the Israeli Wall. Standing at the silent crossing, with journalists, medics, aid agencies, diplomats, church clergy forbidden to enter, we all guessed that something sinister was about to happen to the people trapped helplessly inside. Some used the word "genocide".

If this present massacre is not about defending Israeli citizens, then what is it about? The Israel-Egyptian negotiations give us a clue as to the real reason: Israel has asked that the thousands of Palestinians on the Gazan side of Rafah are transferred to Egyptian control. Egypt is about to set up a large compound of tents for them. Now, is population transfer illegal or not? Is population transfer a form of genocide or not? Tens of thousands of USA and European Jews have been funded to move into illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land and thousands of Palestinians have been pushed off their land or forced to emigrate - is this not part of the Israeli project to Judaise the entirety of Palestine?

About Jack Straw. In December 2005 a report on E.Jerusalem commissioned by the EU** expressed concern about the Israeli Government project to Judaise Jerusalem ( the attempt to make Jerusalem into a united Jewish City by destroying Arab houses, stealing Arab land, moving Jewish Settlers into Palestinian houses by expelling the Palestinian owners and building Jewish-only Settlements on Palestinian land in E.Jerusalem). When the report came before the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels it was decided to shelve it - not to publish the report because it might offend the Israeli Govt.

The British held the EU Presidency at that time and Jack Straw was the Foreign Minister. As far as I know, he chaired that meeting. He certainly gave the announcement that the report was not to be published.The very next day Israel announced it's intention to build another 300 Jewish-only houses in Maale Adumin, the biggest illegal settlement in E.Jerusalem. It seems an amazing coincidence that the israeli announcement followed immediately the day of the suppression of the EU Report. Did Jack Straw have prior knowledge of the Israeli plans to build these houses? Maale Adumin has since expanded further since then. Why did Jack Straw not consider that the rights of the Palestinians to their land, homes, to equal housing, to access to their holy shrines, to work,to access to the W.Bank etc more important than Israeli sensibilities about justifiable criticism from the EU? Instead of protecting Israel from the consequences of it's own crimes, why did he not insist on action being taken by the EU to defend the Palestinian victims of these crimes?

None of this is party-political - I have never belonged to any political party- but I do believe that Ministers should be accountable for the consequences of decisions they take or fail to take and that constituents have a right and duty to request such accountability.

Sincerely, Anne Candlin

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on – Sir Winston Churchill

January 23 1:05 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

To the Israeli Soldier

Listen and listen well

O! One who could have been our brother

For we are one people, whether you like it or not

You are a Semite, A son of Israeel (Isaac)

I am a Semite, A son of Ismaeel (Ishmael)

Our father, the father of both you and I

Is Ibrahim (Abraham)

Or are you one who will even deny his own father?

Listen and listen well

O! One who could have been our brother

We will die on our feet

But we will not live on our knees.

You know how to kill, But we know how to die

Hitler gassed 6 million of you, But he could not kill your spirit

Those who died only made stronger, those who remained alive

Why then do you imagine; that if you become Hitlers

The results of your 'gassing'

Would be any different?

Listen and listen well

O! One who could have been our brother

Just as others silently watched you going into the gas chambers

Others silently watch us burying our children, the children that you continue to kill

But we remind ourselves

That the blow that does not break the back, only strengthens you.

So O! You who used to be the People of Musa (Moses),

But today you have become people of the Firawn (Pharaoh)

Remember we are the real people of Moses, for we believe in his message; not you

Remember that when the fight is between Moses and Pharaoh

Moses always wins.

We say to the silent watchers, the cowards,

We say to those who sit securely in their homes

We are the frontline who are holding back the enemy

When we fall, it will be your turn.

Remember O! Arabs

The story of the White Bull (Al Thawr il Abyadh)

Who said to the world when the tiger finally came for him

Listen O! People, I do not die today,

I died when the Black Bull died.

Listen and listen well

O! One who could have been our brother

We did not come into this world to live here forever

Neither did you

One day we will all go from here

Whether we like it or not

What is important my brother, son of Israeel

Sons of a Prophet, O! What have you become today?

What have you allowed them to make you?

Kill us, if that is what you want to do

At least we die at the hands of our own brothers

And not at the hands of strangers

Listen and listen well

O! One who could have been our brother

We laugh as we see your Apache helicopters and F-16 jets fly overhead

We laugh because we can smell your fear

Why else do you need Apaches and F-16s to fight children with rocks?

A battle of honor is between equals

We challenge you, you who have sold your honor

Come to us as equals; so that we can show you how to die with honor

We laugh at you because we know, that not in a million years

Will one of you ever have the guts to stand up to one of our children

Without hiding behind an array of weapons that the American tax payer gives you

We laugh at you, because that is what every warrior does

When he faces an army of cowards.

Listen and listen well

O! One who could have been our brother

It is not whether we live or die that is important

It is how we live and how we die

Ask yourself: How would you like to be remembered?

Without respect, despised and accursed through the centuries,

Or blessed, honored, your passing mourned.

Allah is our witness: We lived with honor; begging for no favors

And He is our witness: That today we die with honor; on our feet

Fighting until the last breath leaves our body; even if all we have in our hands are stones

He is the witness over us both

As you kill us and as we die

And to Him is our return

Listen and listen well

O! One who could have been our brother

On that Day, my little baby who you killed last night

Will ask Him for what crime she was murdered

Prepare your answer, O! One who could have been our brother

For you will answer to Him

I swear by His Power: You will answer to Him.

~ Mirza Yawar Baig

--
He who sleeps beneath the earth with a heart that lives is better than he who lives with a soul that is dead.

January 21 4:46 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

Please see the pictures below sent in by Farakh that shows vividly how closely the current oppression of our brothers and sisters in Palestine resembles the Nazi oppression of the Jewish people.

When I saw this it reminded me of a website I created many years ago in HTML the hard way, before all the new snazzy web development tools came into being.. oops beginning to show my age !

Surprisingly you can still view this and it hasn't been taken down - However, I now BLOG at

http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/ with regular updates on Gaza situation.

Here's the link -

http://zip.to/khalid check the following ... 'Nazi or Zionist - No Difference', 'Poem - Song of Jenin', 'Poem - Let's get back to Islam'.

As you will see the Song of Jenin Poem could equally well apply to the current conflict in Gaza.

Song of Jenin

Not enough tears on earth
to wash away the blood
Not enough blood on earth
to wash away the pain
Not enough faith on earth
to take away my shame

Pain in my heart
too hard to bear
Shame in my heart
for when I looked..
My brother was not there

I held up my head in pride
When the soldiers came
They never broke the man inside
Never flinched in pain,
never gave up my pride
I fought In Allah's name
For justice I would have died

Couldn't you hear the cries
Couldn't you feel the pain
Didn't you realize
The butcher was back again
Fought a tank with a stone
But never thought I'd fight alone

Pain in my heart
too hard to bear
Shame in my heart
for when I looked..
my brother was not there

Did you hear me call your name
I tried to hold my ground
But no one never came
No enemy cuts so deep
As when brother watches brother
slaughtered like a sheep

what no gun could ever do
You have done to me
I have lost much faith in you
and my heart will never be
whole or happy or healed
Until Palestine is free
Until Islam sees unity

January 20 10:12 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Correspondence received on Gaza Crisis W/E 18.1.09

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

I've finally managed to put this weekly update e-mail together, as it's been extremely hectic on all fronts… there have been marches all over the country, fundraising dinners and lastly the 100's of e-mails that have been flooding in - but the best news of the week is of course the ceasefire - Insha Allah it will hold out and the Massacre will end. It's been a hard task disseminating so much data (some good/some bad) - I'll try to keep future e-mails shorter by using my webspace at http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/ I have been blogging here regularly over the last couple of weeks - so please visit that website for full details on any articles that are of interest to you .

From Khalid Khan

The Information Clearing House is an Independent media source - It is a source of unreported (or under reported) news from around the globe in order to provide more depth and understanding to current issues. One person's effort to correct the distorted perceptions provided by commercial media, who says "This web site grew out of my personal frustration and anger at the failure of traditional commercial media to inform the American public, especially as it relates to US foreign policy". Some excellent links on this site including the following….

"Limbs And Meat" In The Street" - 'A boy next to me, he went crazy, he was overwhelmed, he saw the massacre, the street was full of blood, the nails from the shells were as long as your hand'

US Plans Massive Arms Delivery to Israel - The Pentagon plans to make a large arms delivery to Israel, rising fears that the military campaign in Gaza will go on for a long time

What You Don’t Know About Gaza - NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Here are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation………

Please check this link

http://www.interpal.info/the-palestinians - gives a history of Palestine, maps, timeline of events, and facts about the current situation on the ground.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ - News you won't find on CNN or FOXNEWS
Finally, a couple of points below which I'd like to share with you all from
http://www.allaahuakbar.net/policy.asp - General Guidelines for New Registration, which we should also heed, especially the 5th one during e-mail/sms and dawah with colleagues etc..

General Guidelines for New Registration and our forum ………..

Fourth:

Don't let the internet consume your effort and time for no value. That happens when you navigate between the various sites and online groups for long hours. You waste your precious lifetime hours. That time that you should devote for people like your family, parents, children and relatives, or for your job where you earn the living for you and your dependants.
Fifth:
Visit the Islamic Sites frequently. Visit the useful sites that add to your useful information, and widens up your scales of knowledge. Stay away from the sites that promote corruption to Belief or Morals, those groups that seek the spread of Fitnah or controversy, even if this is over religious issues. Bad controversy is of no avail. Don't interfere in conversations with the enemies of Islam unless you have the necessary knowledge and power that enables you to handle this task. And if not, ask a scholar to handle it instead.

The Holy Qu'ran in Surah 69 - Al-Haqqah, Ayah 36 "Nor hath he any food except the foul Pus from the washing of wounds" - transliteration: "They wounded many people by their cruelty and injustice in this life, and it is befitting that they should have no food other than "the foul pus from the washing of wounds" - this is just a glimpse of how the Zionists will be treated in Jahanam - Allah Hu Akbar !!

From Tamas

This video shows that Zionists didn't read & understand the Torah and much more...Finally a voice of reason that if applied can solve all the crises and conflicts in the middle east

Is this Fox News most important interview ever?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KntmpoRXFX4President

Ahmadinejad Meets Neturei Karta Rabbis

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=R-r04SQ97_Q

Rabbi Weiss of Naturei Karta on Iranian channel 2

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=85jSgzs9-nU&feature=related

From Farakh

Here is Pilger, another stalwart who stands tall amongst men of our time. A very good read .... right from the heart. A couple of highlights to share from this article, if I may?

"When Aretha Franklin sings "Think", her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!""

and here is the bit which clinched it for me ......

"For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out."

Holocaust denied: the lying silence of those who know

: Most people keep asking why the mainstream media is behaving in the way its? Why the bias? Why pro Israel? Here are some answers, worth a read: By Rachel Shabi. She currently lives in Tel Aviv and has written a book on Israel's Oriental Jews, to be published early next year. She was born in Israel to Iraqi parents, and grew up in the UK
Winning the media war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/10/gaza-israel-media

If you have not seen the youtube lecture of Professor Norman Finklestein then try to find some time to watch it

– it's superb and gives all the relevant information you need to know on Palestine/Israel, delivered in the most eloquent manner by an expert on this subject. Here is the link again: Click on: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MON2HL02mec

If you haven't got time then I have created a 'pseudo transcipt' of this lecture in the attached document (excuse any errors). Please have a read, it has all the salient points.

KK: I can e-mail the word document 'Norman Finklestein Lecture.doc' if interested, please let me know.

Listen to Lowkey & Drew McConnell | Stop Gaza Massacre protest London Saturday 3

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5Cay6GUkM

From Saadat Khan

Some quotes from PM's of the most racist state in the world

An excellent insight into the insidious minds of the low-life Zionist Trash (check

http://www.monabaker.com/quotes.htm)

Last Moments of A Dying Mother and Her Child....in Palestine

Inna lillahe wa inna ilayhe rajioon!!! Please see the attached images to witness the last moments of a dying mother.

Terrorists are not born, they are forced to become.

During the bomb blasts done by Israel last month(Dec 2008), around 600 innocents have been brutally killed. US, UK , UN are all watching this human genocide. With the blessings of European Countries, Israel is killing innocents mercilessly. Even now Media will not call US, UK , Israel and its allies as terrorists or at least "Sponsors of terrors".

Shahid Siddiqi Commented "The west are spending thousands in character profile techniques to understand what makes someone a terrorist or decide to become a suicide bomber…No science required, no technical specialism required… just ask your heart how you’d feel"

From Ahmed Sadiq

Boycott Israel News: [Boycott - Economic - Europe] British telecom firm severs ties with Israeli counterparts due to Gaza attacks

http://www.inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10272 and http://www.inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10273

British telecom firm severs ties with Israeli counterparts due to Gaza attacks. It's wonderful to see a British company, FreedomCall, make an ethical decision to boycott Israel. The company deserves our support and encouragement. Zionists are already active in launching e-mail bombing campaigns to punish the company and pressure it to recanting. One campaign originating in the illegal israeli settlement of Ma'ale Adumim in East Jerusalem by an 'IDF mother' who has a morbid hobby of collecting trophy photos for her IDF son of Palestinians being killed is calling on zionists to write, email and telephone the company to complain their decision to boycott Israel.

Action

We request that believers of justice should email FreedomCall (

cs@freedomcall.co.uk) to congratulate them for not ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians and for putting ethics before profits and boycotting Israel. Also consider supporting them by using their products - among other things they do international phone cards.

Website :

http://www.freedomcall.co.uk

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two disgraceful North West Labour MP's spoke in support of Israel 's attacks on Gaza at the pro-Israel rally in Manchester today

Ivan Lewis, the Labour MP for Bury South

"This community stands shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel in the good and the bad times. We do not apply double standards to Israel and the challenges that she faces".

(Guardian website)
Louise Ellman, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside .

"We should stand together to stick up for Israel , to support Israel 's right to defend herself, to say no to Hamas"
(Guardian website)

KK - Please e-mail me and I will provide e-mail address and additional information if you wish to file a complaint

Israel’s Bombardment of Gaza is a War Crime http://pulsemedia.org/2009/01/12/israel-gaza-defence-war-crime/

Galloway responding to a Zionist (An excellent lesson in history )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUFLpP9Prxo

Listen to this moving song and read the lyrics. You can also download it as an mp3. Once you get to the page, scroll down.

http://www.michaelheart.com/Song_for_Gaza.html

You can also see it on youtube at:- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfhoU66s4Y It has already received a quarter of a million hits.Spread it widely.

From Tabassum Hussain

An excellent presentation on Zionist and their agenda in Palestine - Reality-juifs.pps - Please e-mail me and I will send this to you.

From Mazhar Iqbal

"What more proof does one need than the fact that for centuries, Jews have lived peacefully in Arabic countries, enjoying the respect and friendship of their neighbours? The tragedy of Zionism changed all of that. The painful truth is that in the eyes of the Zionist government, Jews are merely the cannon-fodder needed for the State of Israel to achieve its agenda."

CNN, the mouthpiece of the US Hawks, Zionists and all things bad even reports that Israel broke the cease fire.

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/news/currentarticle.cfm?id=156

CNN confirms Israel broke the ceasefire first

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KntmpoRXFX4
Alex Thomson from Channel 4 news on 08.01.2009 @ 8pm (London news) shuts up Mark Regev about Israel's appalling satanic lack of human-rights!!! Not even sparing the babies!!!

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=44072513521&h=lc_nN&u=MqYiD

If you were in any doubt about Zionism then watch this - "Wipe them all out"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle21746.htm&v=FABqq_jjRRo

Israel bombs & Gaza bleeds,

It will answer for its deeds.

Gaza is a killing field,

Gaza needs the Ummah's shield.

Arab rulers have no shame,

Protecting Israel is their aim.

Rulers in the Muslim lands,

Gaza's blood is on your hands.

Muslim armies break your chains,

Protect your ummah from this pain.

O Allah from You we ask,

Move the armies for this task!

Lailaha ilala mohammadur rasool allah

From Steven Longden

Manchester Muslim Email Group

– for Muslims working or interested in public services.

You may be interested in recent statements by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary about the Middle-East. These contans important background about the British Government's policy towards Israel/Palestine and settlement-building.

KK - I have these documents which I can e-mail you if interested: Foreign_Involvement_in_Israeli_Settlement.pdf, FS article in Al Hayat FINAL.doc, FS's statment at the UNSC on the MEPP.doc

Key Quotes from the FS's Abu Dhabi Speech.doc, Media reporting of visit.doc, PM speech to Palestinian Investment Conference.doc, Press Conference between PM and Palestinian PM.doc

From Khurshid

If there is any doubt in anybody's mind about the legitimacy of Hamas & of Israeli culpability in the current genocide,or even if there isn't, please read a most remarkable article written by Avi Shlaim, a Jewish professor at Oxford University at

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine Please forward this message to as many people as possible. This is a highly informed article supported by clear evidence!

The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves. This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680
Jewish MP UK speaking in the Houses of Parliament Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=glAGwSb-zDk&feature=email

Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism" Tzipi Livnis Father was a Terrorist" Astonishing claims in the Houses of Parliament. SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.

During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel. Sir More.. Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed. "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justifica...

From Farakh (Leeds) ….

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8

"Gerald Kaufman made an excellent intervention in the commons on behalf of the cause yesterday, summary of the contribution attached, non from Muslim MP's. Once again George Galloway and Claire Short both spoke with passion."

He is right: Where are the Muslim MPs? Think about it next time you vote. Good friends from Dewsbury (on this email list) should ask their Labour MP if we'll ever see him make even half as good speech as GK, GG or CS or if he'll ever stand up for justice & humanity. If he doesn't or he won't then he doesn't deserve to be elected ever again. Instead elect a a good NON-MUSLIM MP with convictions - he/she will be better for us, imo.

socialwelfareparty@gmail.com

Demands grow for Gaza war crimes investigation. Israel may face UN court ruling on legality of Gaza conflict

Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the "reckless and indiscriminate" shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers.

UK's Jewish MP calls it Nazi-like operation

A British Jewish lawmaker compared the Israeli offensive in Gaza on Thursday to the Nazis who forced his family to flee from Poland. Gerald Kaufman, a member of the Jewish Labour movement linked to Premier Gordon Brown's ruling party, also called for an arms embargo on Israel…………

A war to crush the Palestinians. Eric Ruder argues that Israel's rhetoric about Hamas "terrorism" is a pretext for an attempt to crush the Palestinian national movement.

View original article here:

http://socialistworker.org/2009/01/16/war-to-crush-palestine

From Rafay

Gandhi Grandson Quits After Criticizing Jews. Ben Dobbin, Associated Press - KK pls let me know if you're interested and I'll send the article

E-mails from various people related to Starbucks

There was another e-mail chain related to starbucks which after further investigation was found to be a hoax. However, in further e-mail correspondence with Mazhar Iqbal (Leeds) - he said and I quote

"It is well known that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is a huge supporter of Zionism. For this reason alone boycotting Starbucks is must at any time"

I then received another follow-up on this organisation from Rafay Faruki (London) who expressed the following view, of which the last paragraph is shocking:-

"It is not balooney to say that star buck (nasdaq:sbux) sucks. they do indeed support the zionist state. further more the ceo of sbucks, howard m. schultz, went beyond just support by saying that arabs should be evicted/killed off. this was news item a few years ago and info should still be available. his was widely quoted in the public media and till this arabs dr still drinking it.

Even worse, there was recent article in the press, about zionist retailers trading outside Kabbah, particularly starbucks!! so do not kill off the msg abt sbucks!!"

Ahmed Sadiq (Manchester) wrote "further to your earlier email, 1t is recommended that we boycott Starbucks (and others). See :

http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-starbucks.html

Finally, I received an e-mail from Ray Khan (Bradford) who made the following comment:

"I can confirm this, the owner of STARUCKS Mr Schultz is deffo a contributer to Israel as a Zionist State. This is common knowledge and can be found on Wikipedia

In 1998, Shultz was awarded the "The Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award" from the

Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah for "playing a key role in promoting a close alliance between the United States and Israel".[11]

Look at the name he gave to his company 'STARBUCKS' where STAR = Star of David as on the Israel Flag and BUCKS = Slang for money He indeed does send a lot of BUCKS to ISRAEL.

From Yunus Karbhari
An ingenious example of speech and politics

'Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Moses. When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought, 'What a good opportunity to have a bath!' He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. An Israeli had stolen them.'

The Israeli representative jumped up furiously and shouted, 'What are you talking about? The Israelis weren't there then.'

The Palestinian representative smiled and said: 'And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ron Paul: Israel Created Hamas. !!!! wow now that makes sense.... http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ERCp3VVDYxA&NR=1

Thx bruv, I just forwarded Farakh's stuff to about 100 Most influential political people in East Lancashire, they include the Labour party members, Some lecturers, some Police and Blackburn Muslims Forum .. Gulp !! dunno how I got on their mailing group....

On 12/01/2009, Khan, Khalid

wrote:

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

Masha Allah - Excellent work by brother Farakh ... he really is spending his time wisely and it's positive actions such as this that will make a real impact, Insha Allah. I applaud his research and I am very thankful for his advise, I'm learning so much through this sad conflict... it's very hard to sleep these days with so much going on and so many ideas flying around.. not to mention the death and destruction. I've not had a chance to view the video myself yet, but I will try. I'm so busy trying to collate everything I receive from multiple sources that I can only spare about 20% of my time to digest it. However, in the current crisis- I feel it's important to share the validated info with as many people as possible as quickly as possible. There was that Hoax SMS related to Lidl/Aldi donating their earnings to the war which needs to be STOPPED immediately. I received correspondence from Lidl confirming this - see details in my weekly round-up events e-mail which I will send out on Friday evening Insha Allah. Insha Allah things will improve in Gaza very soon. wasalaam,

Khalid
From:
Karbhari , Sent: 13 January 2009 23:28

Zionist control of US congress Please read the following why US abstained at UN resolution voting January 12, 2009 Tail, Dog, Wag

Gaza residents: IDF troops posing as Hamas men

KK: Please let me know if you want to see the original e-mail and I will forward it onto you.

Thought provoking…..

The question of why the barbaric Israeli military aggression, which had been ongoing since the 27th December 2008, was focussing itself on slaughtering Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, has now been answered! Other than because of the nature of the Jews, of not having pure hearts, the targetting of children is not a co-incidence.

A few months ago, in line with the Ramadhan of 1429 Hijriah, Khaled Misyal, the leader of Hamas, appointed around 3500 Palestinian children who have become hafidz (memorizers of Al-Quran. Those children who have memorized 30 juzs of Al-Quran have become a source of fear for the Zionist Jews. "If in the age of as young as that, they have already mastered the Quran, imagine what would they become in 20 years time from now?" Thus the thought that lingered in the mind of the Jews.

It was no surprise that the Palestinian children have become memorizers of Al-Quran, the conditions in Gaza which had been blockaded by Israel made their interactions with Al-Quran constantly intense. They do not play 'video-games' or any other toys commonly played by their counterparts in other parts of the world. Thus, the condition have spurred them to become memorizers of the Qur'an (hafiz) at a very young age. Now, because of the fear of the invaders, around 500 of those young Qur'an memorizers have become shaheed.

SMS received from a number of people

Please text the word CEASEFIRE to 81819. The Guardian newspaper are running a poll for Gaza. Forward to as many ppl as possible and make ur voice heard

I immediately got a text from Farakh rightly asking me "have you checked the Guardian number ? Otherwise u cud b asking people to text 2 a premium rate no. Where ceasefire cud hav whole new meaning? ". I found that the txt cost 60p which isn't much but I can see where the money's going. Their interest is only to make a quick buck. Imagine how many Muslims sent the text as an emotional reaction, not thinking that we are filling the coffers of the mainstream media who as we all know are totally against all Muslim interests in this or any other conflict. Be careful - CHECK before you act. There are people out there who have other motives. Check your information before blindly forwarding it.

SMS from Siddeek

Wot about dis. Rumours r being circ dat holy Al Aqsa Masjid has bn surrounded by israeli army. Whether this be true or false, surely it is only a matter of time as de Israeli army strengthens its onslaught.

Plz recite "Lailahaill Alla, Allah hu Akbar & Surah Al-Ikhlas x3

SMS from Jamil

As the world celebrates the new year,the Palestinians bury their dead.As we enjoy ourselves,the Palestinians suffer in pain.As we hear fireworks,the Palestinians listen to bombs.As we rush to queue in the sales,the Palestinians rush to queue for their daily rationed bread.As we enjoy the company of our loved ones,the Palestinians wonder who will be next to die from theirs.As we choose new years resolutions,the Palestinians choose their prayers.Muslims fighting for Palestinians request u to Read chapter 48'Al Fath'of the Quran tonight & ask Allah 4 His help & victory,Ameen (Pass this on to others)

To the Israeli Soldier (Pls read 'til the end!) - a beautifully written poem, please e-mail me if interested and I will e-mail it.

SMS from STC (

http://www.savethechildren.net/alliance/index.html)

Thank you for speaking out against violence in Gaza. We'll make your voice count. Find out how we're helping children there at savethechildren.org.uk

SMS from Ray Khan

What is going on is a small part of the big picture. The plan of the Zionists and the new world order is being rolled out. We people can do our best to stop it but unfortunately it will not be enough. They control the media which in turn controls the opinions of the majority of people who have no faith or do not question. They are paving the way for the anitchrist the dajaal. An ex cia official said if the world knew what I knew they would not be able to sleep. These people use the symbols of pharaoh the all seeing eye as on the 1 dollar note. They want to control the world.

My reply: I agree with you and will share with people - however, as you know some people write this off as conspiracy theory. May Allah open all our eyes to the plans of the Kuffar.

Ray's response: 'Don't believe anything, until it has been officially denied' -claud cockburn. 911 was an inside job there is no question. Research 'operation white flag' Research tim osma

SMS from Ghulam Ashraf

Isaar trust humanitarian gaza fundraising campaign - please donate generously to support orphans, widows and families. Confirm donation by text or email

Ghulam S Ashraf - 'knowledge without action is like a tree without fruit'

January 20 2:56 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Account closure of Interpal/UFT by Lloyds TSB/Barclays Bank

Salaams,

Please see below latest feedback from the Charity commission on the Lloyds TSB account closure fiasco. As I said earlier, as well as spending as much time as possible sharing information and spreading the truth about the Zionist Holocaust in the Killing fields of Gaza, we need to continue Helping in this area so that the Zionist Influence in banks such as Lloyds TSB and Barclays (who are currently forcing the same action against UWT (Ummah Welfare Trust)) doesn't force account closure. I'm sure that ALL Muslims and like minded non-Muslims would immediately cease dealings with both these banks if it came to the unfortunate position of account closure for these wonderful charities that are doing such as fantastic job for the Ummah and that have had their names tarnished by the heartless Zionist lobby.

This would sadly result in much needed aid not reaching the Palestinian people in this dire time of need. May Allah shower his blessings upon the Mujahid in Gaza - Janath Firdous is of course guaranteed for these brave martyrs - ALLAH HU AKBAR !

NOTE: The deadline date of 30th January 2009 from Lloyds TSB to close INTERPALs account is fast approaching - PLEASE ACT NOW

Please share with others.

wasalaam,

Khalid (Manchester - UK)

From: Qasim Khan [mailto:qasim@writeme.com]
Sent: 16 January 2009 09:07
To: Calissa Palmer
Subject: Re: A response from the Charity Commission

Calissa,

thank you for your time in responding to my queries.. I will pass it onto the 1000's of people that are concerned about this issue. If it isn't resolved then I'm sure that they will like myself close their accounts with Lloyds and Barclays bank - the general concensus amongst Muslims is that this is an organised campagain by the Zionists in an attempt to stop aid getting to the innocent men, women and children that they are killing before our very eyes on a daily basis. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out."

regards,

Khalid

----- Original Message -----
From: "Calissa Palmer"
To: qasim@writeme.com
Subject: A response from the Charity Commission
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:17:13 -0000

Interpal (1040094)

On behalf of Louise Edwards

Dear Mr Khan,

The Commission recognises that charities often deliver essential services in areas where the need is greatest, and it is clear that there is a real need for humanitarian aid to reach people in the Palestinian Territories. We appreciate the strength of concern that may result from any situation that may present a risk to those essential services.

This situation involving Interpal, Lloyds TSB and the Islamic Bank of Britain is not one in which the Commission can become directly involved or seek to influence. It is a business decision for any bank as a supplier of financial services as to whom they offer those services, and it is a matter for the trustees of any charity to decide which financial institution holds their funds. However, we are discussing the potential implications for Interpal's charitable work with its trustees, and will provide them with any appropriate advice and guidance.

The Commission's statutory inquiry into Interpal remains open. A full statement of the results of the inquiry will be published once it is concluded.

Please address any queries relating to this matter to Louise Edwards at louise.edwards@charitycommission.gsi.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely,

Calissa Palmer
Compliance and Support
Charity Commission

From: Khan, Khalid [mailto:khalid.khan]
Sent: 08 January 2009 14:01
To: islam@listserv.manchester.ac.uk
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Assalamu Alaikum,

Further to my earlier e-mail, here are the letters that I received from John Leech in my post yesterday morning.

In the final paragraph of JohnL2.jpg it mentions a pertinent report called 'Charities back on Track'. I have downloaded and attached this also.

Please refer to the column labelled "Terrorism - alleged connections" on Pages 28/29 of the attached doco "back_on_track.pdf".

Of the 42 charities only 'UK Tamil Students Union' has been highlighted.

I guess we will have to wait until the investigations on INTERPAL and Ummah Welfare Trust (UFT) have been concluded and I'm sure that the tick will not appear against these wonderful organisations that are doing so much for the needy within the Ummah, Insha Allah. This should then clear their names which have obviously been tarnished by the Zionists.

On a closing note, in JohnL1.jpg, John has invited me to respond with any reaction/comment. If any of you have any comments on this issue, after having read the attached letters, please let me know. I will hold back on replying to John for a while.

Wasalaam,

Khalid

From: Khan, Khalid
Sent: 08 January 2009 12:04
To: 'islam@listserv.manchester.ac.uk'
Subject: FW: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Salaams - see notes from my Local MP below.

We have still have another battle on our hands regarding the Zionists targeting legitimate Muslim Charities, such as INTERPAL and getting Banks to stop dealing with them etc. We need to continue our support in this area also... I will forward the letters that I received from John Leech after I have scanned them in later on this afternoon Insha Allah.

wasalaam,

Khalid

From: LEECH, John [mailto:LEECHJ@parliament.uk]
Sent: 08 January 2009 11:54
To: Khan, Khalid
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Dear Khalid,

Thank you for your email. I would be happy to hear your response to the letters. Thanks also for your response to my email about Gaza; I am continuing to monitor the situation and am awaiting a reply from the Foreign Secretary. You may also be interested to know that as a party, the Liberal Democrats have been vocal in our condemnation of Israel’s actions, with our Shadow Foreign Secretary, Ed Davey MP, recently stating that ‘the Israeli reaction is utterly disproportionate’ and that although ‘the rocket attacks by Hamas are totally unacceptable … Israel ought to have learnt from its attack on Lebanon which only served to strengthen the cause of extremism.’ In addition, just this week, Nick Clegg has called on the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel and condemned the ‘aching silence’ of US President-elect Obama. Unfortunately, these comments are rarely reported as widely as I feel they ought to be.

Thanks again for your emails.

Kind regards

John Leech

From: Khan, Khalid [mailto:khalid.khan]
Sent: 07 January 2009 22:41
To: LEECH, John
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Dear John,

I have received letters from the Charity commission and Lloyds TSB in my mail today - thank you very much for the information supplied. I will now share this with some friends and get back to you on any further queries that we may have.

Best regards and a very Happy New Year to you.

Khalid Khan

From: LEECH, John [mailto:LEECHJ@parliament.uk]
Sent: 10 December 2008 10:18
To: Khan, Khalid
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Dear Khalid,

Thank you for your email. I am glad to hear of the extension and I am still awaiting a response to my enquiries. Once one is forthcoming I will be sure to contact you again.

Kind regards

John Leech

From: Khan, Khalid [mailto:khalid.khan]
Sent: 09 December 2008 19:05
To: LEECH, John
Subject: FW: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Hi John,

just received this today regarding the Lloyds TSB/Interpal issue - an extension has been granted until the end of January.

regards,

Khalid Khan

From: Info [mailto:info@interpal.org]
Sent: 09 December 2008 12:57
To: Khan, Khalid
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Awwt, Brother.

The deadline was extended to 30 January about a week or so ago. Our website should say this, Insha-Allah. Jzk once again.

Wassalam

Best wishes;

Admin Section

Interpal

Helping Palestinians in Need

(UK Registered Charity 1040094)

PO BOX 53389 | London | NW10 6WT

T 020 8961 9993 | F 020 8965 6065

info@interpal.org | www.interpal.org

The contents of this e-mail are intended only for the named addressee. It contains information which is confidential and which may also be privileged. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive this e-mail by the named addressee) you must not copy, use, disclose or place any reliance on its contents. If you receive this e-mail in error please notify us immediately and delete it. We make every effort to keep our network free from viruses. However, you do need to check this e-mail and any attachments for viruses. We accept no responsibility for any computer virus which may be transferred by this e-mail. Any views or opinions contained in this e-mail are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Interpal.

From: Khan, Khalid
Sent: 05 December 2008 20:17
To: Info
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Jazak Allah Khair for your reply and I hope that you all have an enjoyable Eid also. Please let me know the outcome of this, because I know that the deadline is Monday 8th December.

Insha - TSB will continue to deal with you so that we can get much needed aid to Palestine.

wasalaam,

Khalid Khan

From: Info [mailto:info@interpal.org]
Sent: 05 December 2008 13:26
To: Khan, Khalid
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Awwt.

Dear Brother,

Just to say your support is greatly appreciated. The response from our friends is overwhelming. It makes the work worth doing. Jzk.

‘Eid Mubarak to you and your family, Insha-Allah.

Wassalam.

Best wishes;

Admin Section

Interpal

Helping Palestinians in Need

(UK Registered Charity 1040094)

PO BOX 53389 | London | NW10 6WT

T 020 8961 9993 | F 020 8965 6065

info@interpal.org | www.interpal.org

From: Khan, KhalidSent: 03 December 2008 01:41
To: islam@listserv.manchester.ac.uk
Subject: FW: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine
Importance: High

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

Please read the Latest feedback on this issue from a local Manchester MP (Lib Dem Party) and also some interesting feedback from Brother Mazhar attached.

wasalaam,

Khalid

From: Khan, Khalid
Sent: 03 December 2008 01:31
To: 'LEECH, John'
Cc: 'Mazhar '
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine
Importance: High

John,

I cannot thank you enough for your investigations so far and the actions you have taken. I'll pass your message below onto my extensive list of contacts around the UK who are very concerned that a charitable organisation such as Interpal can be linked with Terrorism in this way without any proof. I look forward to hearing back from you when you receive a response to your other letters. Please see below the latest feedback I have on this issue from a friend.

Thank you again for taking time to investigate this issue on behalf of the Muslim community, on what I'm sure is an extremely busy work schedule.

best regards,

Khalid Khan

From: LEECH, John [mailto:LEECHJ@parliament.uk]
Sent: Tue 12/2/2008 5:13 PM
To: Khan, Khalid
Subject: RE: Outrageous decision to cease dealings with Charity organisation in Palestine

Dear Mr Khan,

Thank you for your e-mail and I apologise for the slight delay in getting back to you. Thank you also for bringing the issue of Interpal’s problems with Lloyds TSB to my attention. Having conducted some research into the matter, it seems evident to me that if Lloyds is basing its actions on evidence, then this evidence is not widely available in the UK and is not available to the relevant UK authorities.

My first course of action was to write to Eric Daniels, CEO of Lloyds TSB. In order to establish more firmly what action can be taken, I asked Mr Daniels why Lloyds felt it necessary to act the way they have. I understand that there is some suspicion by authorities in the United States regarding the possibility of Interpal funding terrorist organisations. If Mr Daniels’ response is that Lloyds felt under pressure from US authorities, then I have asked him to pass any relevant US-sourced information to the appropriate UK authorities as soon as possible.

As I know you are aware, the Charity Commission is currently conducting an ongoing investigation into the activities of Interpal. It seems to me that if there were any proven links between Interpal and terrorist groups, then the Commission would wish to put these in the public domain as soon as practicable. That way, such activities could be halted and the overwhelming majority of British Muslims – who I know have fundamental disagreements with terrorist activity – could immediately end any support they gave to ensure that those who need it most receive their donations.

Having spoken with the lead investigator into Interpal at the Charity Commission, I was informed that no publication of any report into their investigation was imminent. I have written to ask specifically what the current state of play is and whether they have any evidence to link Interpal with terrorist activities. Hopefully, between these two letters, I should be able to establish pretty firmly why Lloyds have acted in the way they have. I shall, of course, let you know the outcomes of my letters to Mr Daniels and the Charity Commission.

I appreciate the importance of this issue given the effects that it will have within a reasonably short timeframe on the work of Interpal. I hope to receive quite swift responses, however if you have any further questions or queries in the meantime then please do not hesitate to contact me, or anyone in my office.

King regards,

John Leech

Copy of letter posted to Mr. Daniels (Chief executive)

Mr. Daniels,

I was extremely shocked and dismayed when I heard that your bank has served notice on the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB) to cease dealings with Interpal.

This decision shows an utter lack of respect to the Muslim community in Britain and a total disregard of the innocent lives that are being lost in Palestine. Whoever took this decision in the bank should be utterly ashamed of this action, and the potential not only to damage Interpal but also to affect community relations (and cohesion) in Britain.

I heard that the bank hasn't even waited for the Charity Commission to publish its latest report on Interpal before taking this draconian and punitive measure. Further to this, the decision was taken without any consideration of the thousands of contributors who have placed their faith in Interpal to assist the needy of Palestine - and who want to continue to do so. How a financial institution can behave in such a manner so soon after benefiting from a bailout of taxpayer’s money without considering that Muslims are also among British taxpayers is beyond belief.

I urge you to take action and rescind this outrageous, unfair and arbitrary decision.

Regards,

Khalid Khan

Lowkey & Drew McConnell & Michael Heart on Gaza Conflict

Lowkey & Drew McConnell | Stop Gaza Massacre protest London Saturday 3

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5Cay6GUkM

Submitted by: Farakh

Also, listen to this moving song and read the lyrics. You can also download it as an mp3. Once you get to the page, scroll down.

http://www.michaelheart.com/Song_for_Gaza.html

You can also see it on youtube at:-

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfhoU66s4Y

It has already received a quarter of a million hits.

Spread it widely.

Submitted by: Ahmed

WE WILL NOT GO DOWN - Song for Gaza (Composed by Michael Heart)

A blinding flash of white light
Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they're dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes
With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike
Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who's wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain
And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

January 18 3:29 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Poem for Gaza - May Allah bring Peace to the region

Israel bombs & Gaza bleeds,

It will answer for its deeds.

Gaza is a killing field,

Gaza needs the Ummah's shield.

Arab rulers have no shame,

Protecting Israel is their aim.

Rulers in the Muslim lands,

Gaza's blood is on your hands.

Muslim armies break your chains,

Protect your ummah from this pain.

O Allah from You we ask,

Move the armies for this task!

Lailaha ilala mohammadur rasool allah

Allahumma rahmataka arjoo fala takilnee ila nafsee tarfata AAayn, wa-aslih lee sha'nee kullah, la ilaha illa ant

O Allah, it is your mercy that I hope for, so do not leave me in charge of my affairs even for a blink of an eye and rectify for me all of my affairs. None has the right to be worshipped.

January 18 2:42 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

POEM BY A PALESTINIAN CHILD

Here's a track based on a Poem from Outlandish's album : Closer Than Veins (2005) - 03. Look Into My Eyes. A very touching account in the day of a life of a Palestinian child.

Look into my eyes
Tell me what you see
You don't see a damn thing
'cause you can't relate to me
You're blinded by our differences
My life makes no sense to you
I'm the persecuted one
You're the red, white and blue

Each day you wake in tranquility
No fears to cross your eyes
Each day I wake in gratitude
Thanking God He let me rise
You worry about your education
And the bills you have to pay
I worry about my vulnerable life
And if I'll survive another day
Your biggest fear is getting a ticket
As you cruise your Cadillac
My fear is that the tank that has just left
Will turn around and come back

Yet, do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows
Has our world gone all blind?

Do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows?
Someone tell me...

Ooohh, let's not cry tonight
I promise you one day it's through
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters
Ooohh, shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters

See I've known terror for quite some time
57 years so cruel
Terror breathes the air I breathe
It's the checkpoint on my way to school
Terror is the robbery of my land
And the torture of my mother
The imprisonment of my innocent father
The bullet in my baby brother
The bulldozers and the tanks
The gases and the guns
The bombs that fall outside my door
All due to your funds
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of my enemies
I'm terrorized in my own land (what)
And I'm the terrorist?

Yet, do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows
Has our world gone all blind?

Do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows?
Someone tell me...

Ooohh, let's not cry tonight, I promise you one day it's through
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,
Ooohh, shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,

America, do you realize that the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize my every living day
So if I won't be here tomorrow
It's written in my fate
May the future bring a brighter day
The end of our wait

(pause)

Ooohh, let's not cry tonight, I promise you one day it's through
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,
Ooohh, shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,

[with kids]
Ohh let's not cry tonight I promise you one day is through
Ohh my brothers! Ohh my sisters!
Ooh shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers! Ohh my sisters!

January 18 2:24 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Providing help and assistance to Orphans

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

I thought that I'd share my thoughts on the topic of orphans with you, since a colleague has been discussing this with me today and it seems to make sense to consider helping now (if you aren't doing so already) - especially in view of the tragic situation in Gaza. There are many fundraising events around the country, but this a continuing charity which requires a very small portion of your earnings to give an orphan a bright future, Insha Allah. I think it's a good time to sponsor an orphan from either one of these organisations - it costs a mere £25/month (or 83p/day). This donation goes a long way to relieve the poverty experienced by needy children and your sponsorship payments contribute towards the provision of the basic needs of the child such as milk, food, clothing, education and healthcare.

I selected them because I know that they both pass 100% of your donations to the cause that you have chosen. Tax claimed from the Inland Revenue through the Gift Aid Scheme is used to cover administrative costs. Please see below some pertinent excerpts from their respective websites below:-

http://www.humanappeal.org.uk

Human Appeal International are working to "Relieve the suffering endured by victims of poverty social injustice and natural disasters and to improve the quality of life in deprived communities through education health and social development." We believe that all people should have: Security of life - Security of property - Security of religious beliefs - Security of education - Security of family.

Human Appeal International (HAI)

believes that every child and especially orphans have the right to be clothed, nourished, live a healthy life and have access to a good education.

Human Appeal International aims to secure sponsorship for orphans to provide them with a better future to enable them to be able to support themselves and their communities.

HAI has sponsored thousands of orphans since 1991 and is currently sponsoring orphans in 17 countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan, Kashmir, Bangladesh, Palestine, Iraq, Indonesia and many others.

These orphanages cater for all the basic needs of the orphans and provide a caring and loving environment for them to grow up healthy and happy.

HAI provide full details of the orphan including a picture and an orphan certificate. An annual report will be issued which will include a update report from the orphan field staff and a school report. If the orphan is personally able to write, the letter will be forwarded to the sponsor.

We would like to add that 100% of your donations go directly into helping deprived and afflicted people through our projects. We do not take any overheads or administrative costs.

http://www.interpal.info

Interpal is a non-political, non-profit making British charity that works with international funding partners and partners on the ground to provide relief and development aid to Palestinians in need, mainly in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Interpal seeks to help Palestinians overcome the harsh conditions they face resulting from over 60 years of suffering and occupation by providing them with humanitarian aid, emergency aid and protection from the elements promoting good health within their communities assisting them in the advancement of education providing them with the necessary social welfare facilities and services

Interpals' one-to-one Sponsorship Programme aims to provide essential aid, as well as moral support to the most vulnerable in Palestinian society. A small monthly income is provided to around 6,700 Palestinian orphans, 800 needy children, and 75 poor families. Once you become a sponsor, we will provide you with an annual progress report and we encourage contact between you and your sponsored child by translating and forwarding your letters.

Interpal engages in fundraising campaigns and events in order to raise awareness of Palestinian issues and the funds necessary for Interpal’s work of providing "multi-dimensional aid". Funds are obtained through donations and sponsors with administrative costs usually covered by tax schemes (e.g. Gift Aid) or specific donations towards administrative costs. Administrative costs have been under 10% and are never deducted from specific donations.

The Holy prophet (pbuh) said "I and the person who looks after an orphan will enter paradise together like this", then he raised his forefinger and middle finger together. (Bukhari)

Surah Al-Baqarah (chapter 2) - Ayat/Verse 177

It is not Al-Birr (piety, righteousness) that you turn your faces towards the east and (or) west (in prayers); but Al-Birr is (the quality of) the one who believes in Allah, the Last day, the Angels, the Book, the Prophets and gives his wealth, in spite of love for it, to the kinsfolk, or the orphans and to Al-Masakin (the poor), and to the wayfarer and to those who ask, and set slaves free, performs As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat), and gives the Zaqat, and who fulfil their covenant when they make it, and who are patient in extreme poverty and ailment (disease) and at the time of fighting (during the battles). Such are the people of the truth and they are Al-Muttaqin (the pious).

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All verses in the Holy Qu'ran that mention the word 'Orphan' - with ones relavant to this message in

red

Surah Al-Baqarah (chapter 2)

- Ayat/Verses 83, 177, 215, 220

Surah An-Nisa (chapter 4)

- Ayat/Verses 2,3,6,8,9,10, 36, 127

Surah Al-An'am (chapter 6) - Ayat/Verse 152

Surah Al-Anfal (chapter 8) - Ayat/Verse 41

Surah Al-Isra (chapter 17) - Ayat/Verse 34

Surah Al-Kahf (chapter 18) - Ayat/Verse 82

Surah Al-Hasr (chapter 59) - Ayat/Verse 7

Surah Al-Insan (chapter 76) - Ayat/Verse 8

Surah Al-Fajr (chapter 89) - Ayat/Verse 17

Surah Al-Balad (chapter 90) - Ayat/Verse 15

Surah Al-Duha (chapter 93) - Ayat/Verses 6, 9

Surah Al-Ma'un (chapter 107) - Ayat/Verse 2

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Please pass this message onto your contacts so that we can help as many orphans as possible in this real time of need and feel free to contact me via phone/e-mail if you need further information.

Wasalaam,

Khalid Khan

http://sz3cv9.spaces.live.com/

January 16 1:00 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it

Horror in Gaza - They’ve killed us. Me, Amal and Soso. They’ve gone to heaven’

This is the type of thing that really really hurts.. As a colleague said in an earlier message to me…

"The west are spending thousands in character profile techniques to understand what makes someone a terrorist or decide to become a suicide bomber…No science required, no technical specialise required… just ask your heart how you’d feel"…Shahid - see images of "Last moments of a dying Mother and her child in Palestine in Shahid's e-mail which I will send a link out to tomorrow.

Terrorists are not born, they are forced to become. During the bomb blasts by Israel since Dec 2008, around 600 innocents have been brutally killed with the Help of the US/UK - while the UN stand by and watch this human genocide. With the blessings of European Countries, Israel is killing innocents mercilessly. Even now the Media the will not call US, UK , Israel and its allies as terrorists or at least "Sponsors of terror".

http://www.interpal.info/ They’ve killed us. Me, Amal and Soso. They’ve gone to heaven’

January 14: 2009 Source: The Guardian

Four-year-old Samer Abed Rabbo lay half-covered by a blanket yesterday in her hospital bed as she tried to explain the bullets that crippled her and killed her two sisters.

Samer was hit by a bullet in the back that damaged her spinal cord and left her arms and legs paralysed, probably permanently. Her sisters Amal, two, and Suad, eight, who was nicknamed Soso, were killed outright when their house in northern Gaza came under attack from an Israeli tank last week.

"They killed us. We’re dead. Me, Amal and Soso. They’ve gone to heaven," she said. "I was at home. The Jews destroyed the house and I don’t want to go back there. I love Amal and Soso."

Israel’s military says it does not target civilians and blames Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza, for the high civilian casualty toll because it fights from within urban areas. The Israeli military is in turn accused of using its immense firepower indiscriminately in built-up areas packed with civilian families trying to shelter from the fighting. More than half of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants are children.

The extraordinary number of civilian deaths, and of children in particular, is for many a defining and shocking feature of this 18-day offensive. The figures are stark. At least 910 Palestinians are dead, among them 292 children. At least 4,250 are injured, among them 1,497 children. Many have injuries that will leave them permanently disabled and facing more operations and months or years of rehabilitation therapy.

Samer and her sisters lived on the eastern edge of Jabaliya, a poor farming area close to the border with Israel and the site of many militant rocket launches and Israeli incursions in the past. At around 11am last Wednesday they saw Israeli tanks approaching.

"The tanks moved closer but before they arrived in front of our house they started shelling," said the girls’ mother Kawather Abed Rabbo, 29. "They attacked the upper floors and destroyed them. We stayed on the ground floor."

The house next door was also hit. Then the children’s grandmother decided they should run to safety. She opened the door, with the girls following close behind her. "They had a white flag, made out of our scarves. But as they opened the door there was machine gun fire from the tank." Their father, Mahmoud, pulled the girls back into the house and called an ambulance. But Amal and Suad were already dead.

They waited an hour until the ambulance got as near as it could, then the parents and an uncle each picked up one of the girls and walked out for around 500 metres to the main road. "We walked past the tanks and the soldiers were telling us in Hebrew to hurry," Abed Rabbo said. There they met the ambulance and were rushed to a nearby hospital and then on to the Shifa hospital in central Gaza City.

Abed Rabbo said she was not aware of any militants near the house when the Israeli tanks arrived, though she admitted it had been a "dangerous" area in the past, caught between militant rocket launchers and Israeli raids. "We’re not fighters but the Israeli army are so scared they think every child can resist," she said.

Efforts are under way to take Samer out of Gaza and fly her to Belgium for an operation on her spinal cord. Her doctor, Nabil Hadad, said he believed she had been hit by a large machine gun bullet, which entered her back, hit her spine and then exited, leaving her with quadriplegia and spinal cord damage.

The hospital is full of similar stories. In the intensive care unit yesterday was Muhammad Baha, 10, who had been brought in from Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza. He had been hit in the head by shrapnel and was spending his fourth day in a coma in a critical condition.

In another room was Muhammad Samouni, five, one of the survivors of an Israeli attack on a house in Zeitoun last week in which up to 30 members of one family were killed as they sheltered from the bombing. Muhammad’s right arm was broken in several places and he wears a metal brace pinned into the skin. His uncle, Awani Deeb, 22, sleeps on the floor next to his bed. "Every night he wakes from his sleep screaming ‘Warplane, warplane’," he said.

"I"m afraid of the missiles at night," said Muhammad. "Last night they were attacking again. The sound is so loud."

January 15 11:25 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Israel’s Bombardment of Gaza is a War Crime

The following is a letter signed by attorneys and academics which appeared in The Sunday Times titled “Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence – it’s a war crime”. As Israel has illegally occupied Palestinian territory since 1967 (there is no good reason why international consensus dates the injustice to ‘67; it has its roots in the ethnic cleansing of ‘48) it is not defending itself, in the legal sense, and is the aggressor. Diana Buttu put it succinctly when she said, “Israel has the right to protect itself it doesn’t have the right to protect its occupation.”

ISRAEL has sought to justify its military attacks on Gaza by stating that it amounts to an act of “self-defence” as recognised by Article 51, United Nations Charter. We categorically reject this contention.

The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence. Under international law self-defence is an act of last resort and is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity.

The killing of almost 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 3,000 injuries, accompanied by the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN compounds and government buildings, which Israel has a responsibility to protect under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire.

For 18 months Israel had imposed an unlawful blockade on the coastal strip that brought Gazan society to the brink of collapse. In the three years after Israel’s redeployment from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. And yet in 2005-8, according to the UN, the Israeli army killed about 1,250 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. Throughout this time the Gaza Strip remained occupied territory under international law because Israel maintained effective control over it.

Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defence, not least because its assault on Gaza was unnecessary. Israel could have agreed to renew the truce with Hamas. Instead it killed 225 Palestinians on the first day of its attack. As things stand, its invasion and bombardment of Gaza amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5m inhabitants contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law. In addition, the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes.

We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes. Israel has a right to take reasonable and proportionate means to protect its civilian population from such attacks. However, the manner and scale of its operations in Gaza amount to an act of aggression and is contrary to international law, notwithstanding the rocket attacks by Hamas.

Ian Brownlie QC, Blackstone Chambers

Mark Muller QC, Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales

Michael Mansfield QC and Joel Bennathan QC, Tooks Chambers

Sir Geoffrey Bindman, University College, London

Professor Richard Falk, Princeton University

Professor M Cherif Bassiouni, DePaul University, Chicago

Professor Christine Chinkin, LSE

Professor John B Quigley, Ohio State University

Professor Iain Scobbie and Victor Kattan, School of Oriental and African Studies

Professor Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

Professor Said Mahmoudi, Stockholm University

Professor Max du Plessis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban

Professor Bill Bowring, Birkbeck College

Professor Joshua Castellino, Middlesex University

Professor Thomas Skouteris and Professor Michael Kagan, American University of Cairo

Professor Javaid Rehman, Brunel University

Daniel Machover, Chairman, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights

Dr Phoebe Okawa, Queen Mary University

John Strawson, University of East London

Dr Nisrine Abiad, British Institute of International and Comparative Law

Dr Michael Kearney, University of York

Dr Shane Darcy, National University of Ireland, Galway

Dr Michelle Burgis, University of St Andrews

Dr Niaz Shah, University of Hull

Liz Davies, Chair, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyer

Prof Michael Lynk, The University of Western Ontario

Steve Kamlish QC and Michael Topolski QC, Tooks Chambers

January 14 4:01 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC

Zionist control of US congress - Tail, Dog, Wag

The U.S., together with France, had authored the recent UN Gaza ceasefire resolution but then, in the evening of January 8 between 9:15pm and 10:15pm, was the only one to abstain from it. How come? Julian Berger wrote for The Guardian on January 9: The US change of mind came at the last moment, as a result of White House intervention following a call from Olmert. Rice was overridden and in the final vote, the US abstained. In her remarks afterwards, Rice made clear she backed the resolution, saying the US "fully supports" its goals, text and objectives. Aluf Benn for Haaretz reported yesterday:U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supported the UN Resolution and assisted with its formulation. Livni was in contact with Rice in an attempt to soften its wording.

At the last minute, at 3:30 A.M., Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also intervened with a desperate phone call to President George W. Bush, requesting that the United States veto the resolution. Bush refused, simply instructing Rice to abstain from the vote. Now Olmert gives his version of that day: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday. "She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention. In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said "I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me. "I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

Bush was in Philadelphia on January 8 talking about the no child left behind sham between 11am and 12am. The time difference between Israel and U.S. eastern is -7 hours. If Olmert called at 3:30 that would have been 8:30pm in Washington DC, not during any official speech in Philadelphia, but right before the Security Council meeting. So Olmert is exaggerating his influence here - he did not get Bush to interrupt a speech, but he did get him to change a UN vote.. But the essence is clear. Israel called and the U.S. president did as he was told to do. Dog, Tail, Wag, whatever ...

January 14 3:48 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | ISLAMIC